Thirteen
by templremus1990
Summary: He has fled death many times before. Now time's up. WARNING: very dark, very angsty deathfic.


**Thirteen**

Eleven was shy and withdrawn, with a rare smile that seemed to come from far within.

Twelve gathered people around himself with cheerful desperation, fiercely protective and never still.

Each life seems to fall away more quickly than the last. He is so old now that a lifetime is starting to seem like no time at all. He has seen the end of the universe itself, witnessed the rise and fall of whole solar systems, survived a hundred wars, while death shadows him like a partner in crime.

It has always been a matter of time before this partner turns on him.

* * *

This personality is livelier than the last, frequently impatient and always a short step away from mania. Everything he sees retains that edge of intensity that he so often experiences following a regeneration, everything he touches crackling with raw energy, and he loves it.

Though he has never believed in fate he has to laugh at the irony of that. It is only now, when his days are so clearly numbered, that he has learnt to value the passing of time again.

With everything and nothing left to lose he pushes himself to the limits on a daily basis.

Breaking points fascinate him; how long he can go without food, without rest, relishing these extremes of feeling. Having escaped from each brush with the darkness he returns to his ship, sometimes barely making it inside the console room before collapsing. Still he finds the strength to smile, because he is alive. Her telepathic touch eases him into a healing sleep, black and dreamless, until he is ready to do it all again. She is the one constant in his existence, his oldest friend and his link with a world long gone.

For so many lifetimes he has kept her going with bits of string and a prayer that he scarcely thinks of it. This is all he knows now, their life, their normality, two telepathic beings co-existing on the edge of destruction.

Somehow he never dreamt that She would be the one to break first.

* * *

The shock of the explosion shatters his body and his mind in a single instant. The noise is deafening but somehow all he can hear is silence, gaping and total as Her presence is torn from him with hideous finality.

Together they plunge into oblivion.

* * *

After an untold time splinters of consciousness pierce through the empty black of his being. Present and past are indistinguishable, a hundred familiar faces and voices calling his name. All he can do is whisper, _I'm sorry_, over and over again, but they have already faded.

Another eternity slips by before the darkness opens up once more.

There is movement close by him, and something warm and wet explores his face. Blindly his hands reach out, pushing past the barrier of pain until he touches cool skin. Perhaps the creature recognises the severity of his condition, because it doesn't draw back, allowing his fingers to trace the outline of its body, over the flat snout and four spindly legs.

As he becomes aware of the familiar metal grating a jolt of memory flashes through him, _the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through those doors, _and with it comes the realisation that this is the end.

He lets his arms fall, turns his head away, and waits.

The scent of blood is almost strong enough to keep them back, but the accompanying sound of a predator is absent, and so they dare to draw closer.

Soon there are four or five of them, gathered tightly around the broken form in his broken home. The only movement is the very slight rise and fall of his chest, and the steady progress of blood that spiders from dozens of wounds to fall through the metal grating on which he lies.

As the hours pass his lips begin to form words silently again, and the flicker of what might be a smile crosses his features.

It is still there when everything else has gone.

* * *

It is more than a hundred years before something else descends upon the tiny world orbiting a dull red sun. This time the beings inside it climb out alive. Their shape resembles that of the lone figure from over a century ago, but their smell is all wrong, and a protective sheaf of white shields them from the world.

They tear up plants with the roots and work loose rock with ruthless efficiency. They send crippling bolts flying into the middle of the herd, take the fallen with them and scatter the rest.

By the time they split the air open with noise and disappear they have travelled far over the rugged surface. Once, one of them pauses in the journey back to the group and bends its faceless head towards the ground. When it straightens up again it is holding what looks like another shard of rock, only this one is long and flat, one side a deep blue.

For a brief moment the strange intruder stands, surveying the surrounding landscape, the dip in the ground where at some time another, long buried, had breathed.

Then the cries of the others break the stillness. Their companion runs on, and soon the sounds are lost, and the planet is its own once again.


End file.
